Father Dan Kendall, a professor and former chair of the Department of Theology at the University of San Francisco, and the last Jesuit in his department, poses for a portrait at the university in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, May 7, 2009. USF is eliminating the theology masters program, the only Catholic theology program in Northern California for those with full time jobs.

The University of San Francisco has canceled its master's in theology program, provoking a bitter disagreement about what it means for the future of the university.

Some faculty, alumni and students connected to the program say the university is losing the graduate degree most closely linked with its Jesuit Catholic mission. They say the closure is the culmination of a series of actions eroding the institution's Catholic identity.

But USF President Stephen Privett, a Jesuit priest for 38 years, said such broad statements misconstrue the nature of the university as it tries to engage with a rapidly changing world.

"It would be simplistic to reduce the Catholic character to any single program," Privett said in an interview.

The program itself is unique in the Bay Area because it is geared toward people who work full time by offering all of its classes on Saturdays over a three-year period. It draws people from as far away as Sacramento, Monterey and Santa Rosa. This past semester, it had a student who commuted by bus from Los Angeles.

It is the sort of program that has a multiplying effect, say former students, because many people who enroll are in positions of lay leadership within Catholic schools or dioceses, including the Archdiocese of San Francisco. They're people like Sandra Jewett.

Even though she was the principal of Five Wounds Catholic School in San Jose, Jewett felt she needed to be a faith leader as much as an educational and administrative one.

"If a kid asks a question that's theologically based, how do you answer if you're not theologically grounded?" asked Jewett, now the executive director for a consortium of inner-city Catholic schools in the Diocese of Oakland.

Privett said the program was closed for a number of reasons. The economic downturn has meant that the university began looking at programs that were losing money, including this one. In addition, he felt that the graduate program in pastoral ministries at Santa Clara University, which he helped design, offered a similar education.

"It was pretty clear: The needs of the church were being met by Santa Clara," said Privett.

USF students and faculty dispute whether Santa Clara's program is truly theologically similar, pointing to the fact that many bypass Santa Clara. Jewett, for example, lives less than 2 miles from Santa Clara University, but she said that program did not meet her needs.

Several former and current faculty in the department of theology and religious studies worry that the greater damage may be to USF's identity as a Catholic institution, which they say has been diminished over the past decade.

The university requires that undergraduates take only one course in religious studies. That means that a single course about Buddhism, for example, might be the full exposure a student may get at USF, San Francisco's premier Catholic educational institution. Department supporters say this means USF has the weakest religious studies requirement of any of the 28 Jesuit universities and colleges in the nation.

"If we require only one course at the undergraduate level, and we're canceling the M.A. program, what does that say about our Catholic identity?" asked the Rev. Dan Kendall, a professor in the department for 30 years.

Without a graduate department in religious studies, the university will find fewer Jesuits who want to teach at USF, said Kendall and the Rev. James Bretzke, a former professor in the department who now teaches at Boston College. Kendall is now the lone Jesuit in the USF department, though it's averaged four to six Jesuits over the past three decades.

Privett says the opponents are misguided. Since he came to the university nine years ago, Privett said he's added an undergraduate minor in Catholic studies and opened the Lane Center for Catholic Studies and Social Thought.

"We have ample opportunity for students to pursue theology in depth," he said.

But, he said, the university needs to adapt to all of its students - 71 percent of whom are not Catholic.

"I'm not sure that forcing students into a Catholic theology course is appropriate if the student is Muslim, Hindu or Jewish," he said. In the core curriculum, "what we are trying to do is evoke from students sensitivity to the mystery and reality of God."

Even though religious courses and Mass were required in high school, Quintero believes college is a different time. She continues to go to Mass and she is involved in campus ministry. For the university to require another course would be the wrong decision, she said.

"It shouldn't be forced upon you," said Quintero, a double major in Latin American studies and international studies. "It should come from within."